NSW Premier Chris Minns has become personally involved in an eleventh-hour bid to avert a railway strike shutting down Sydney for three days.

Further crisis talks will be held on Thursday seeking to keep trains running on Australia’s busiest rail network which moves one million people a day.

It comes after a meeting late Wednesday involving the premier and Transport Minister Jo Haylen failed to reach an outcome. 

Trains from Newcastle to Wollongong and across Sydney are due to lay dormant from Friday morning until Sunday night amid an escalating pay dispute between the NSW government and rail workers.

Minns and Haylen met with Rail, Tram and Bus Union NSW branch representatives on Wednesday afternoon.

“While no agreement has been reached, we have agreed to continue talks (on Thursday),” a NSW government spokesperson said.

Union secretary Toby Warnes said the government was choosing to stop trains rather than meet the union’s demand for 24-hour rail operations to prevent its industrial action.

“We have given them the ways and the means in which they can run trains this weekend … they are again choosing not to do that,” he told reporters on Wednesday.

Services were run around the clock across the previous weekend to ward off stop-work bans but transport officials have said continuing them was not sustainable.

The union wants a 32 per cent pay rise across four years, while the government has offered 11 per cent across three.

The train network moves more than one million people on a typical day.

Transport for NSW said it was working to offer emergency transport options “if” rail services did not run.

Rideshare operators Didi and Uber will limit surge pricing but fares will be higher than usual in some areas such as entertainment precincts to attract drivers.

The Sydney Metro will run more frequent services on Friday but is mostly closed for maintenance at the weekend.

Light rail services on Saturday will run a Friday timetable with more frequent services.

A “major event bus plan” is being developed to get people to Sydney Olympic Park.

It will be confirmed before Saturday but will not be able to cater to all usual routes or capacities.

The transport minister initially announced a four-day shutdown to begin on Thursday, which was revised down to three days after the union said officials misread its advised industrial action.

Members of the Labor government and the coalition opposition threw blame at each other in parliament late on Wednesday after the premier’s meeting failed to solve the impending crisis.

Opposition Leader Mark Speakman moved the house “condemns the industrial terrorism of the (union) and condemns the incompetence and cowardice of the government in handling the rail dispute”, which failed to pass, or prevent a shutdown.

-with AAP